Building cyberinfrastructure requires bridging the gap between "domain scientists" (e.g. geologists) and computer scientists. The resulting ecosystem of researchers, instruments, software, databases, and more can improve scientific workflows and facilitate Earth Science innovation.

For much of this work, I partner with Jim Bowring and his team at the Cyberinfrastructure Research and Development Lab for the Earth Sciences (CIRDLES) at the College of Charleston.

ET_Redux for ID-TIMS U-Pb Geochronology

ET_Redux provides end-to-end data handling for U-Pb geochronology by ID-TIMS as part of a cyberinfrastructure that includes Tripoli mass spectrometer data handling, ET_Redux for data reduction, uncertainty propagation, and interactive data visualization and interpretation, and finally the Geochron database for public or private data archival and retrieval. ET_Redux is the flagship software package from CIRDLES, and is used by ID-TIMS U-Pb geochronology labs around the world.

ET_Redux for LA-ICPMS U-Pb Geochronology

As an outgrowth of our successful ID-TIMS software and partnering with George Gehrels at the Arizona LaserChron Center, we've added the ability to perform data reduction and uncertainty propagation for laser ablation U-Pb data, including new algorithms for compositional data handling, sample-standard bracketing, and estimating overdispersion in measured data. Adoption of the software and/or algorithms should help the LA-ICPMS community overcome persistent inter-laboratory bias, provide new live data reduction and visualization capabilities, and leverage the established statistical and visualization abilities of ET_Redux for TIMS data.

ET_Redux for U-series geochronology

Again building on the success of ET_Redux for U-Pb geochronology, Jim Bowring and I have partnered with Andrea Dutton from the University of Florida and Ken Rubin from the University of Hawaii to import legacy carbonate and silicate U-series data, correct for revisions to U-series decay constants so that the data are comparable, and then visualize the data and archive it at the public Geochron database. The resulting cyberinfrastructure will facilitate, for instance, compiling decades of U-series coral data to estimate changes in global sea level over the last few hundred thousand years.

Find more information and the latest release at our Github site.Our first output, a community publication about data reporting guidelines: Dutton et al. (2017)